Brockton drug arrest becomes court clash

A Brockton tenant of the Elmcourt Hotel has gotten a restraining order enabling him to return to his home. The landlord had attempted to evict him after the tenant was arrested on drug-related charges.

Hotel owner Chip Yannone, no stranger to troubling activities at his West Elm Street establishment, said he quickly tossed out Niles' belongings, changed the locks to his room and told him not to return.

Niles, who three days after being released on bail, accused Yannone of skirting the law with what he called an unlawful eviction, and he filed a temporary restraining order against the landlord and the hotel to move back into his room.

The two are now at odds – a standoff that underscores a familiar struggle between a landlord's effort to evict a nuisance tenant and the legal rights of those who reside in their building.

"You get arrested for dealing drugs in my hotel, I pull the room back into my possession while the police do whatever they do with you," Yannone said. "I don't want you here."

Niles said his landlord jumped the gun.

"If I go to trial, and I beat the case, then you kicked me out for nothing," he said. "I know my rights. I'm innocent."

Since moving to Brockton from Roxbury roughly four years ago, Niles, who is on disability for severe asthma, said he has tried to stay out of trouble.

No stranger to law enforcement, he served a six-month sentence for a probation violation in 2011, he said.

Since then, he said, "I stay to myself. I'm not a person who hangs out in the streets."

At 7:30 a.m. last Friday, police knocked down the door to his room as Niles slept.

Their search turned up a digital scale, a slew of prescription pills and $2,317.

Niles was arrested and later charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute.

Upon his return, Niles – who pays a weekly rent of $237 – said his room had been stripped of all his possessions and that several of his belongings were missing, including an iPad, his 12-year-old daughter's cell phone, a jacket from The North Face and $200, he said.

Yannone disputes those claims saying that a friend of Niles was seen clearing his things.

"We didn't expect him to come back so we didn't have the room cleaned up," he said. "I was hoping he wouldn't come back."

With 63 rooms, the hotel typically houses more than 100 people, the majority of whom rent long-term, Yannone said.

Page 2 of 2 - As a result, there is occasional drug activity and violent crime at the Elmcourt, he added. Due to that, Yannone said, he cooperates with authorities during police raids, which he said helps weed out the few bad apples.

But most of those arrests are futile, he said, as many offenders cycle back to the hotel.

"Five out of six people who have been arrested in these raids have ended back on my front door either that day or the next day, wondering why they can't stay," he said.

Adam Ponte, a lawyer at Kenney and Adams law firm, based in Boston, said Yannone's mistake was not in trying to assert his right to evict, but in the manner in which he went about it.

"I can understand the landlord not wanting someone who is involved in dangerous activity living in his building, but the landlord did not follow proper summary process, " Ponte said.

A landlord trying to evict a tenant for illegal drug usage or sale doesn't have to go through the typical notice process, he said. "But, he added, "he still has to go through the court. The court has to be involved."

Yannone's lawyer, Mark Adams, noted that his client has been fair dealing with tenants.

"I've seen Chip in operation for decades and he runs a pretty tight ship," he said.

Yannone said he has now begun taking the proper steps with Adams, his lawyer, to file the paperwork to begin Niles' eviction process.

In the meantime, he said, he will consider having a stricter screening process for tenants, a difficult task, but one he said that is necessary.

"This isn't the first time this has happened to me, and I'm sure it's not going to be the last," he said.

"I'm sure that they're going to be landlords out there that feel my pain. This isn't something new."